Obongjayar is the moniker of Nigerian-born, London-based artist Steven Umoh.

With afrobeat, soul and hip-hop influences, Umoh has created a bold, genre-defiant musicality. His debut full-length, Some Nights I Dream of Doors represents an exploration of everything from familial expectation to self-seeking politicians; there’s a boldness and a confidence to every track. ‘Message In a Hammer’ pulses with Fela Kuti Zombie-esque rhythm and urgency (Obongjayar soundtracked and narrated Akinola Davies Jr’s short film ‘One Day Go Be One Day’ tracing Fela Kuti’s legacy in Lagos), while in ‘Parasite’, he offers a searing takedown of, ‘conservative leaders trying to tell people of disadvantaged backgrounds how to live and to better their lives, when they have no experience or understanding of our lives.’ In softer moments like ‘Wish It Was Me’ – a song about his younger brother – and piano ballad ‘Wind Sailor’ there’s a powerful vulnerability in Obongjayar’s lesser-heard singing voice.

SBTRKT’s eponymously titled debut pulled off a series of impressive feats: it’s bursting with fresh ideas, and yet it sounds immediately familiar. It’s sound-patterns and rhythms can easily soundtrack the ecstatic hands in the air dance floor moments as well as reliving the monotony of the morning commute. It’s influences are incorporated with subtlety and sophistication: dense enough to interpret, light enough to dance to.

Since the release of his debut album in 2011, SBTRKT has cemented his role as one of the most acclaimed electronic artists and performers around. What began as praise in his hometown of London has now reached to every corner of the globe.

Back in 2017, Minneapolis-raised artist Jeremy Nutzman emerged with his debut project, NCOD,  released under the moniker Velvet Negroni. It was a sprawling and strangely beautiful sound, with vast electronics teeming with an ambitious experimentalism and forthright vocals, all unconfined by any specific genre. This sound was something which, at the time, Nutzman credited to his unusual upbringing: a Black kid adopted by a strict white evangelical Christian family, he’d had no access to secular music through his youth, and so his reference points to popular genres came much later. “I grew up with no freedom”, he says now, though as the years go on he is less and less certain on what impact his childhood has had on the work that he makes today.

In any case, his unique soundscapes brought him to big audiences and bigger fans: sampled by Kanye West, touring with Bon Iver, and signed to 4AD for the release of his acclaimed 2019 album Neon Brown. A few years later, he is gearing up for the release of his propulsive new album Bulli, a record that trembles with a slick and polished new intensity following a relatively tumultuous life period. “I started using drugs again in a negative manner,” he says, “And felt like I lost all my friends or their respect. And then there was Covid, and I was at home, then my CashApp got hacked. And because of that I got paranoid as fuck for a long time and stayed in the house.”

Rather than the new album being insular and lonely, it’s the result of more outward-looking collaboration. It was during this time that he reconnected with Hunter Morley, a friend from a previous band project called Pony Bwoy. The pair moved in together and started making music together again: “I was so grateful to have found a producer who was willing to work with me, it felt like,” he laughs, “Cos I just didn’t feel good about myself at all.” The record is, Nutzman concedes, not the result of feeling compelled to create something, but a worry that he should be producing new material because it’s his job. “It was really stress-based, my viewpoint on it then wasn’t what it is now.”